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The Blank Page

When I was in the fourth grade, Miss Nichols introduced a new girl to our class named Laurie MacElhenny. She had brown hair, hazel-green eyes, freckles and more importantly, a father named, Hugh. Also known as “Crazy Legs MacElhenny,” Hugh MacElhenny, was a celebrated open-field running back signed by the New York Giants. They had just moved to our small town. The news of Laurie and her father rippled through Todd Elementary School in a wave of whispers that could defy the speed of any technology available today. And, of course, every boy in the fourth grade immediately fell in love with her, myself included.

This was no hormonal crush. I was only nine at the time – there wouldn’t be a whiff of testosterone until I was well into the eighth grade – but my “love” for Laurie was no less intoxicating. I, and the rest of the fourth grade boys, had a fixation on her that was all consuming. None of us ever spoke of this to her, of course. In those days, we loved from afar. But, she was all I/we could think about. I even wrote a poem.

Not a good idea when you have two older brothers.

I knew it was risky. They were always on the lookout for any sign of weakness they could exploit. But I was confident. The poem was safely hidden away, one among three hundred sheets of white, lined paper bound inside my mammoth, grey, three-ring, school binder.

“What were you writing the other day?”

“Nothin.”

“I saw you.”

“It was nothin.”

“Gimme that notebook.”

Still, I was cool. There was no way they would flip through every page. They didn’t have the patience. My face was a mask of unconcern.

Until they found it. And started reading it aloud. With every bit of drama worthy of Elizabethan actors. To this day I can still feel the flush of my cheeks turning crimson.

I learned at an early age that while our thoughts are our own, what is put down on paper is for everyone.

And therein lies the nature of writer’s block. You. Will. Be. Judged. In the mind, our thoughts are free to float and swirl with reckless abandon. Ideas ebb and flow like the tides. Suppositions and arguments twist with the winds of our subconscious. Distilling these myriad notions into one thought, one focus, one sentence is a declaration. It says, “This is who I am. This is what I believe.” Writing defines us.

And that can be a scary. When I first sat down to write Anvil of God, I didn’t know where to start. I tried to imagine a scene between Charlemagne’s father and the last of the Merovingian Kings…just to create some character interaction. Four hours later, I shut down the computer. I was shaking. The characters had run amok and the scene I had written was so disturbing that I couldn’t look at it for three days. I had written that? (It still scares me).

I understood then what writers talk about when referring to their “muse.” (Okay, mine is a dark muse, but it’s still a muse). When I had recovered from the shock, I knew there was no going back. Writing opens a window to the soul.

And yet we do it. We put ourselves down on paper, knowing that we will be judged.

It takes an enormous act of hubris. What could I possibly have to write that is worthy of being read? It’s a very high bar.

Hence the blank page.

Poetry in Primetime

I had intended to post something more mainstream in my first “Tuesday Poetry Post” but was surprised to find a slice of poetry in primetime on”The Blacklist” the other night. It was delivered quite well by James Spader’s character Reddington :

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Have you ever sailed across an ocean

On a sailboat surrounded by sea

With no land in sight –

Without even the possibility of sighting land – for days to come?

To stand at the helm of your destiny?

I want that one more time.

I want to be in the Piazza del campo in Siena

To feel the surge of ten racehorses go thundering by.

I want another meal in Paris at L’Ambroisie at the Place des Vosges.

I want another bottle of wine

And then another.

I want the warmth of a woman and the cool set of sheets,

One more night of jazz at the Vanguard.

I want to stand on summits and smoke Cubans

And feel the sun on my face

For as long as I can.

Walk on the wall again.

Climb the tower.

Ride the river.

Stare at the frescoes.

I want to sit in the garden and read one more good book.

Most of all I want to sleep.

I want to sleep like I slept when I was a boy.

Give me that.

Just one time.

Long-term Memories

Thanksgivings are for memories. Here’s one.

We used to wrestle with my father. And despite the fact that we had numbers on our side, it was always a suicide mission. We’d throw ourselves at his great tree-trunk legs, trying to bring him down and he would swat us aside like Godzilla dispensing with the Japanese army.

Eventually, he would end up on the floor (probably to prevent crushing one of us) and we would swarm over him, Lilliputians trying to hold him down. In the end, he would stack us up, one on top of the other, holding us down with one hand while tickling us with the other. He would laugh until tears came out of his eyes.

As we grew older, we could compete on size as well as strength. And there were more of us – six to be exact – with my sister Jean and my youngest brother Bean, every bit a part of the carnage. My older brothers and I would leap off chairs and the living room couch to cling to my father’s back while the littler ones tried to trip up his legs. I distinctly remember my mother positioning herself in front of the new color television set to ensure that no one put a foot through it.

It was still a one-sided affair. My dad had this ju-jitsu-style move he had learned in the Marine Corps that he employed to overcome any and all attacks. No one was immune. His hands would spin in an odd-figure eight maneuver and we were forever at his mercy. It always ended the same – bodies strewn everywhere – all of us collapsed in laughter.

Now that we are grown, agreement is rare in my family. We don’t share the same political views, work in the same profession or even all practice the same religion. Some live on the east coast, some on the west, some in the north, some in the south. “All Chiefs, no Indians,” my mother often says.

Yet deep down, we know we are still connected – indelibly bonded by a decades-old, suicide mission to wrestle my father to the ground and make him laugh until the tears came out of his eyes. We few. We very few…

What Do We Tell the Children?

“Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta.

Eyes – The opening lines of Loita by Vladimir Nabokov,

Sex, or the promise of sex, has permeated literature since the days of Tristan and Isolde. So much so, that I can ‘t imagine one without the other. D.H. Lawrence, Thomas Hardy, Ernest Hemingway, Henry Miller, Anaïs Nin, Philip Roth, Harold Robbins, (I could go on). So, as an author, I always assumed it was part of the craft and part of my job.

I never considered, however, the effect that writing a book with sex scenes in it might have on the people around me. Say, for example, my children.

“I don’t have enough money to pay for the therapy it will take to remove those scenes from my head,” says my youngest (who at last counting is 24 years old).

Another son complained that at a weekly poker game with his buddies, one of his friends asked, “What’s up with your dad?”

His friend pulled out Anvil of God and started reading aloud one of the more graphic scenes.“What do you mean?”

“I don’t know, Mr. Gleason,” A young family friend said the other day, shaking his head. “After reading all these sex scenes, this book is suddenly becoming about you.”

My neighbor tried to put a cheerful face on it. “I’m still on Chapter 2…and already hooked on the family drama, the disturbing church-imposed penance, and a lusty masturbation scene! LOL!”

I’m getting a wide berth from the girls their age. “Wowser!” said one. “I had no idea.” Even people my age are thrown for a loop. “It’s saucy,” my old boss says. “I didn’t know you had it in you.”

The only ones who apparently aren’t wigged out by the experience are my mother’s friends.

“It’s ‘saucy,’” I warned my mother’s neighbor, Peggy. “I just want to make sure you know what you’re getting into.”

She winked at me and smiled. “I’ve been an adult now for a few years,” she said. “I think I can handle it.”

Virgin Territory

So I sit down to write my first novel. It’s a big step. You have to convince yourself that you are worthy of the task and, more importantly, that you will complete it. There is no trying a novel on for size. You are either “all in” or you’re not.

I am all in. The research is done. I have a good starting point, the lead characters are developed and I know how the story ends. I am writing.

Anvil of God lips copy

And it is going well. None of the blank screen issues are slowing me down; I’m piling up page after page, the first chapter is taking shape – until I get to the first sex scene – and then everything comes to a grinding halt.

It’s not that I hadn’t considered the question. Having been raised on the likes of Philip Roth, John Barth, Mary McCarthy and James Clavell, I always assumed there would be sex scenes in my book. I just had never written any.

I find there are a myriad of choices to make. How far do I let the characters go? Do I stop them at first base and fade to black? Second? Third? Is it necessary for the reader to watch them go all the way? How much detail is too much detail? How do I get them undressed without slowing the scene down?

I shrug off my hesitation, remind myself that I’m “all in” and dive into the scene. I’ll edit later.

At first, I’m enjoying it. And then I hit another snag. The word “penis” seems too clinical. Same with “vagina.” And even if they weren’t, how many times can you say “penis” and “vagina” without getting redundant or silly? I Google euphemisms and they all sound like the stuff of bodice rippers. His “burgeoning manhood” and her “nether lips” aren’t helping. The scene is getting worse. How do you describe pubic hair without saying “pubic hair” – especially in an historical time frame? I find myself avoiding the word “hard” no matter what the context. “Throbbing,” too, is out. I limp through the end of my tumescent scene and put it away, chastened by the undulating process, gorged with euphemisms.

A few months later, I take a summer refresher course at Dartmouth College on creative writing taught by author Barbara Dimmick (In the Presence of Horses, Heart-Side Up). We, of course, had to read our work in class for discussion. I read my chapter, sex scene and all and it became the focus of the entire hour.

“If you are writing to titillate the reader – or yourself – you are writing for the wrong reason,” Dimmick warns.* “There are no generic sex scenes. Sex is so intimate that it changes with each partner. Couples create their own language for sex; they go so far as to name the intimate parts of their bodies. They have their own signals for intimacy, their own rituals for foreplay. To be credible, the scene must reflect that level intimacy. It should give your readers insights into your characters, not you.”

There are more than a few sex scenes in Anvil of God. But I make no apologies for them. They present a unique window into each character’s identity. It’s like pulling aside the curtain in the Wizard of Oz. We see them naked, (literally) without the clothing of their persona for the outside world. For Trudi, sex is an act of independence; for Carloman it is a counterpoint to the rigidity of his religious beliefs, for Pippin an expression of joy and respite from the violence of his life. The scenes advance the story in a way no other scene could.

I have found it more difficult to explain this to friends and people I know (for which such topics are usually off-limits). But then, as an author, I don’t have a choice. I have to be all in. Or I can’t be an author at all.

Next: What will the children think?

* Quotes are based on my admittedly limited memory and should be considered paraphrased at best.